Should using unsigned long long be this difficult?

Question

So I have a number. Possibly a big number that I would like to use. When I do the following, valueToGet is fine (1252904880010) when it returns but when I step to currentTimeStamp the value is something like 18446744072483981194.
I can only assume that maybe I am missing some basic understanding of how methods return this value.
-(void)processTimestampReceived
NSString* timeString = @"1252904880010";
unsigned long long currentTimestamp = [self getUnsignedLongLong: timeString];
NSLog(@"currentTimeStamp (converted from timeString): %qu", currentTimestamp);
-(unsigned long long)getUnsignedLongLong:(NSString*)longString
NSScanner* scanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString:longString];
unsigned long long valueToGet;
if([scanner scanLongLong:&valueToGet] == YES) {
return valueToGet;
return -1;

Answer 1

That is so discouraging that code that SHOULD work actually does work for everyone but me. Here is the data after I changed the following code. I had to use scanHexLongLong to actually return an unsigned long long instead of just long long. Is it possible that maybe something is just stomping on that memory location somehow and giving me bad data? But consistently the same way? Seems odd.
2009-09-14 02:36:37.325 TestApp[46744:20b] lVal=322333076619280
2009-09-14 02:36:37.530 TestApp[46744:20b] currentTimeStamp (converted from timeString): 322333076619280
Run using:
[self processTimestampReceived];
unsigned long long lVal = [self getUnsignedLongLong:@"1252904880010"];
NSLog(@"lVal=%qu", lVal);
-(void)processTimestampReceived
NSString* timeString = @"1252904880010";
unsigned long long currentTimestamp = [self getUnsignedLongLong: timeString];
NSLog(@"currentTimeStamp (converted from timeString): %qu", currentTimestamp);
-(unsigned long long)getUnsignedLongLong:(NSString*)longString
NSScanner* scanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString:longString];
unsigned long long valueToGet;
if([scanner scanHexLongLong:&valueToGet] == YES) {
return valueToGet;
return -1;